Friday Facts #244 - Localised plurals & Modernisation progress

[ske]

That was a bombshell to start the weekend off.

Dropping Linux support, man, I thought you guys were cool

Wait what? Where'd you get that?!

Maybe because they are now exclusively developing the new graphics for DirectX with Vulcan/Metal following later (maybe, but no date given and the 1.0 release is heavily targeted).

Did they ever release download figures for the different operating systems? I suspect that the steam downloads for LInux are in the low single percent range. Maybe the next 1% that gets dropped.

Maybe Linux users will be stuck at an old version for a long time or run at a much lower frame rate due to the old graphics backend.

[OvermindDL1]

Maybe because they are now exclusively developing the new graphics for DirectX with Vulcan/Metal following later (maybe, but no date given and the 1.0 release is heavily targeted).

Did they ever release download figures for the different operating systems? I suspect that the steam downloads for LInux are in the low single percent range. Maybe the next 1% that gets dropped.

Maybe Linux users will be stuck at an old version for a long time or run at a much lower frame rate due to the old graphics backend.

They specifically state that OGL 3.3 and DX11 are what is being used, and they designed it with future Vulkan in mind.

OGL 3.3 runs on linux fine, and Vulkan runs on linux fine, and I don't see anything in the article about dropping linux support, so again I don't get where this is referenced?

And if by old API you mean something that still gets me 60fps consistently, I don't see the issue...

[Durabys]

*reads the articles...suddenly notices something*

Progress on engine modernisation (Posila)
The rewrite of the rendering framework goes well. We are at the point where the game looks exactly the same (with minor fixes to line rendering) as our main 0.17 branch, and the only major thing that is missing is proper error handling - for example, we don't want the game to terminate if a screenshot command fails for whatever reason. I was surprised at how many things we had to rewrite, but we took our time, and I think it is already worth it. The game rendering performs significantly better (well, at least on CPU side of the pipeline for now - more on that in some future Friday Facts) in both OpenGL and DirectX.

...wait...does it mean that Factorio's Smelter/Steam Smoke won't suck the Frames Per Second life out of my Overclocked "Ultimate Settings Doom(2016) at 60Hz & Supreme Commander W/8 Player at 2000 Units Each" PC anymore!?

In the immortal (literally) words of Vampirella Seras Victoria: OH THE FUCK YES!!!

[Proxy]

The unloading station in the background using fast inserters instead of stack inserters is confusing.

[thecatlover1996]

Yay for not having to zoom in anymore to read the FFF on my phone! Next up: mobile-ready forum?

[fiery_salmon]

So I will be unable to update to .17. A pity.

Yay, I am the 1%!

[kse]

Maybe because they are now exclusively developing the new graphics for DirectX with Vulcan/Metal following later (maybe, but no date given and the 1.0 release is heavily targeted).

Did they ever release download figures for the different operating systems? I suspect that the steam downloads for LInux are in the low single percent range. Maybe the next 1% that gets dropped.

Maybe Linux users will be stuck at an old version for a long time or run at a much lower frame rate due to the old graphics backend.

They specifically state that OGL 3.3 and DX11 are what is being used, and they designed it with future Vulkan in mind.

OGL 3.3 runs on linux fine, and Vulkan runs on linux fine, and I don't see anything in the article about dropping linux support, so again I don't get where this is referenced?

And if by old API you mean something that still gets me 60fps consistently, I don't see the issue...

Heh, when I read it now, it doesn't specifically state this.
I guess my mind wandered and extrapolated from DX being improved that they were dropping OpenGL for future versions.

NB: It was meant in jest, I still think they are cool.

[OvermindDL1]

So I will be unable to update to .17. A pity.

Yay, I am the 1%!

What do you have?! OGL3.3 is on the order of rather ancient at this point... o.O

[Sanqui]

Yay for not having to zoom in anymore to read the FFF on my phone! :D Next up: mobile-ready forum? ;)

I'll see what I can do ;)

[Bilka]

Yay for not having to zoom in anymore to read the FFF on my phone! :D Next up: mobile-ready forum? ;)

I'll see what I can do ;)

Just update the wiki and I'll take care of that too :)

[Sanqui]

Just update the wiki and I'll take care of that too :)

I'll get in touch soon :)

[posila]

Maybe because they are now exclusively developing the new graphics for DirectX with Vulcan/Metal following later (maybe, but no date given and the 1.0 release is heavily targeted).

But we want Vulkan specifically for better overall gaming experience on Linux and macOS. There is nothing exclusive about DirectX backend, I just said it faster and that's why we keep it for Windows users instead of having just OpenGL. DirectX was always important to us.

[Omnifarious]

I tried playing Factorio on a very beefy Windows Dell laptop for awhile. It had the common Intel/Nvidia combo. For some bizarre reason, Windows keeps on switching it to the Intel card, despite me trying to tell it in multiple ways that it shouldn't do that. And when it does do that anyway, most of the rendering ends up happening on the CPU.

When I'm using DirectX and this happens, performance falls through the floor (10-20 FPS). When I'm using OpenGL and do this, frame rates drop from a smooth 60 down to 30-40 on average. Under DirectX, it's stops being playable. Under OpenGL, it's annoying but still playable.

So, while DirectX probably has better performance when doing hardware rendering, it appears that OpenGL has the edge in software rendering.

[roidal]

So I will be unable to update to .17. A pity.

Yay, I am the 1%!

What do you have?! OGL3.3 is on the order of rather ancient at this point... o.O

For example my old Notebook with a AMD HD6000 GPU. I got OGL3.3 just 2 weeks ago when i updated to Fedora 28. On Fedora 27 the radeon-driver did only support OGL3.2 (on that GPU).

[Tungsten]

We'll still leave 1% of players behind, so they are going to be stuck with 0.16, similar to when we dropped 32-bit support, but everybody else should benefit from better performance and hopefully a better looking game eventually.

Got me stuck in the 32-bit version for a while, but it showed a good excuse to give myself a kick-ass VR-ready PC for my birthday!

[PaszaVonPomiot]

Super excited for new performance improvements.

[Eyeer]

Is there any plans for SLI support?

[posila]

Is there any plans for SLI support?

No plans for SLI

[Eyeer]

Eyeer wrote:
Is there any plans for SLI support?

No plans for SLI

I understand that decision - even as SLI user i see that this technology is dying. Thanks for response.

Great work with performance - i spend hundreds of hours in this game and to this time the biggest problem is hitting low UPS eventually. So i really wait for .17 and later for Vulkan support

PS. It seems that HDR is cool emerging technology - with is also proven to be popular in TV market - i think that factory would look sick with extended luminance range

[luc]

Devs: you might also be interested to know that in some languages, currency is pluralized differently:

EN zero euros, one euro, two euros... (normal pluralization rules)
FR zéro euro, un euro, deux euros... (normal pluralization rules)
NL nul euro, een euro, twee euro... (always singular)
DE null euro, ein euro, zwei euro... (always singular)

There is currently no currency in the base game, but mods and the website might have it.